"Are You A Human?" to the rescue. Detroit Start-up nixes spambots.

[Lowell]

We have been plagued with spambot new-member registrations on DetroitYES in the past year. Since we visually scan all registrations we have watched this grow to the point where about half of the new registrations were bot created.

These increasingly sophisticated programs have figured out how to read those annoying 'captchas' [scrambled letters on hard-to-read-backgrounds that seem to frustrate humans but not the bots] and simple question tests like 'how much is seven minus two'.

We have tried blocking IP ranges, primarily out of Eastern Europe and South Asia from where the majority originate, with little effect other than to annoy some genuine requesters or even current members and lurkers.

Downtown Detroit-based www.AreYouAHuman.com has figured out an ingenuous way to both foil the bots and make the human verification process fun.

Registrants play simple game like catching moving butterflies instead of birds or dragging a car instead of a piece of pie into a parking space. It makes one smile and proves their humanity. Since we applied it last week there has been no successful spambot registration.

If you go their website www.AreYouAHuman.com you will find a demo you can play, or try to register with DetroitYES and you will see it there.

So a big thanks from DetroitYES.com and kudos to Benjamin Blackmer, Co-founder of AreYouAHuman.com who has provided me details, and his team for this solution and for Making it Detroit.

[jcole]

Works for me; I hope they start using that on more websites very soon

[iheartthed]

That was a good idea.

[Jimaz]

The developers are located in Detroit? That's even better.

There's talent in them thar hills!

[Scottathew]

Very cool. And right in Detroit. Not "Detroit", but Detroit!

[Brock7]

Apparently I'm a bot. The only internet access I have at present is through Opera Mini which doesn't have flash or java, but I already have an account here.

[Traxus]

Apparently I'm a bot. The only internet access I have at present is through Opera Mini which doesn't have flash or java, but I already have an account here.

Not having flash is typical, but Javascript is a pretty basic requirement... I'm not sure what hardware you're on but if it can handle a browser that handles this site in mobile, you've probably got other options for browsing...

[Thruster315]

I'm so tired of trying to read captchas that look like my five year old niece's handwriting. Thank goodness for something new and as effective!

[jtf1972]

This is a great idea.

[downtownguy]

With all due respect, Lowell, what do spambots see in DetroitYes?

The typical captcha example they show on the site is pretty much what I see every time I encounter one of the those stupid things -- gibberish! I did the demo 3 times and was successful on 2 [[better than most of my captcha attempts) and was only stymied by putting the golf ball in the hole. This is why I don't golf. Did anybody get that one?

[wolverine]

Good ideas, right from Detroit. Very clever fix to this annoying problem!

[Lowell]

With all due respect, Lowell, what do spambots see in DetroitYes?

Bots have no idea what DetroitYES is and could care less if they could care. They are mindless programs that seek out message boards and gain entry. The goal is to get an account then post ad links from affiliate accounts their owners set up with advertisers. Newbie and Dimbo click on them and they make money. Or maybe they have have a 'click farm' in India hitting them or another bot clicking them. It's a game of pennies -- million of them.

AreYouAHuman.com will be a real challenge for them as its random movements with a mix of logic make compensatory programing probably impossible. It's not like a captcha that, no matter how hard it maybe to read, at least doesn't move, let alone require a logical solution.

[Jimaz]

I'm trying to imagine a website where you'd want to use such a test to accomplish the opposite goal—admit the bots but omit all the meatware [[human users). It might be something like a Core War sandbox where real human interaction would hold an unfair advantage over the bots.

Active Worlds actively encourages benign bots. They even provide the tools to create them [[some programming required ). Great fun!

The Turing Test deserves mention here too.

[compn]

i've been looking for a captcha replacement. neat.

[rb336]

That is a cool new system. I usually have to reload the captcha images three-four times before i get one that is legible

[poobert]

Great! I hate those unreadable captchas. And as if having to register on every single website ever wasn't annoying enough. Great to see American ingenuity is alive and well in Detroit.